The Internet TESL Journal

Helping ESL Students Adapt to Authentic

Listening Situations
John P. Madden
jpmadden{at}stcloudstate.edu
St. Cloud State University (St. Cloud, MN, USA)
Learners and teachers give listening greater emphasis now than in the past (Flowerdew & Miller,
2005), though frustrated learners traveling in English speaking countries have always recognized the
importance of L2 listening. Given global travel and Internet connections, L2 listening outside the
classroom will only gain in importance. Listening after class ends presents challenges and
opportunities. Having to start listening in the middle of a conversation or broadcast is a challenge for
learners; pursuing their own interests presents an opportunity for L2 listeners. This article describes
techniques I have used to help learners meet the challenge of listening from the middle and take
advantage of the opportunity to listen thematically (Madden, 2002b). These techniques helped my
intermediate adult learners in a university-based intensive English program in the United States. The
techniques can be used with learners over a range of ages, languages, and proficiency levels. First,
Ill provide a rationale for the techniques, and then describe the techniques themselves.

Rationale
We usually know why we are listening, and we usually have some idea of what
we are likely to hear, as Ur noted (1984). Our reasons and expectations help us
understand the words we hear. This relationship between expectations and words
is central to listening. Listening comprehension is the result of the interaction
between bottom-up andtop-down listening skills. Bottom-up skills involve
decoding constructing a message from sounds, words, and phrases. Top-down
skills involve using background knowledge to make inferences about what the
speaker intended. Good L1 listeners have fast, automatic, bottom-up skills. L2
listeners rely on top-down skills to supplement their less developed bottom-up
listening. In class, we provide listening lessons with before-, during- and after-
listening elements to allow learners to use their top-down skills and to develop
their bottom-up skills (Rost, 2002; Flowerdew & Miller, 2005; Ur, 1984; Saricoban,
1999; Tsui& Fullilove, 1998; Tyler, 2001).

The goal of listening instruction is to prepare students to understand actual

speech in order to communicate in English. Rost (2002) states that L2 listeners
must learn to cope with genuine speech andauthentic listening situations. That
is, listeners must be able to understand natural English speech to meet their own
needs as members of the English-speaking community (pp. 123-123). However,
learners find that many aspects of authentic listening situations are not under
their control. To meet that challenge, teachers provide L2 listeners with strategy
training (Mendelsohn, 1994, 1995). L2 listeners may have to start listening from
the middle of a conversation, having to attune to the conversation while
simultaneously trying to understand it. A listening lesson can be adapted to teach
learners how to cope with that situation. In other real-world contexts, learners
have on-going L1 conversations with friends, or follow issues or programs that
interest them. Offering students guidance for similar, thematic listening in the L2
can help them pursue their listening interests in English outside the classroom.
Listening from the Middle
Listening from the middle is a strategy-training activity based on the ideas of
Mendelsohn (1994, 1995), and Anderson and Lynch (1988). Mendelsohn (1994)
described how he helped his students hypothesize by listening to an audio
recording of the middle of a medical procedure part of a larger discussion about
inferences (1994, pp. 104-115). In my class, I used course materials for a similar
end. The goal of the current activity is to give learners strategies for starting to
listen in the middle of a conversation by quickly making inferences about
thesetting, mood, interpersonal relationships, and topic (Mendelsohn, 1994).
See also Anderson & Lynch (1988), Mendelsohn (1995), Brown (1990, in
Mendelsohn, 1995), and White (1998). Listening from the middle involves 15-25
minutes of listening, note taking, and class discussion.

Listening Text

Use a recorded text, and start with a portion from the middle, rather than at the
beginning. Listening from the middle is an adaptation of pre-listening activities
designed to preview a text by playing a portion of it, discussing it, and making
predictions. I used the audio recordings from my course texts because the
difficulty level reasonably matched the needs of my students. For a discussion of
issues relating to input, see Rost (2002).

Procedure

1. Introduce the activity. The class could share times when they have had
to start listening in the middle of a conversation or broadcast in their first or
second languages. Explain that the class will be working on how to listen
from the middle. Explain the importance about knowing about the listening
time and place, the speakers, their feelings, what kind of speech they are
engaged in, what the topic is, and why someone might want to listen.
2. Tell the students they will be taking notes and discussing what they hear.
Present the following guides to the class. Provide copies, or display them
and have students copy them into their notebooks. I wrote versions of
these guides on a chalkboard or white board. The first is adapted from
reading instruction.

What came What I heard *(Start here): What comes next:

before:

(Table 1; see Richardson & Morgan, 1990, p. 97; Ogle, 1986)

What I can identify about:

Speakers:

Emotions:

Relationships among the speakers:

Type of listening:

Topic:

Why someone might listen to this:

(Table 2. Based on Mendelsohn, 1995; Anderson & Lynch, 1988)

3. Tell the students to be ready to take notes in the What I heardpart of

Table 1.

3. Play a one-minute segment from the middle of the listening text. All of the
speakers should be heard in this portion. Students should take notes.

3. Stop the recording. Students should check their notes with a classmate.
The discussion provides additional listening practice and opportunities to
negotiate meaning (Lee & Van Patten, 2003; Pica, Young, & Doughty,
1987).

3. Play the same one-minute segment again. Have the students check or add
to their notes, and then confer a second time with classmates.

3. As a class, discuss and fill out the displayed copy of the What I heard
portion of Table 1. As a class, discuss and fill out Table 2.

3. Play the segment a third time. Then, as a class, make corrections to the
What I heard and What I can identify about tables. I have found that the
repetitions and class discussion helps intermediate learners develop their
listening. The repetitions could be omitted for advanced listeners, or to
increase the context authenticity of the activity.

3. As a class, discuss and fill out predictions for the What came before and
What comes next portions of Table 1. Students can confirm these
predictions by hearing the entire listening selection.

3. To close this activity, review the basic strategy of attuning to the listening
by identifying who is speaking and what they are saying. Next, the class
can move on to working with the listening text as a whole. As homework,
 students could try out this approach, and report back to class on when and
where they had to listen from the middle, and how effective they found the
technique. In future classes, use the technique to introduce listening texts.

Thematic Listening
One good extension for listening from the middle is thematic listening, or listening
to texts that have related ideas. Thematic listening allows us to apply what we
have learned to a new listening situation, something we normally do when we
listen (Ur, 1984). We listen thematically when we follow favorite television shows
or have repeated conversations with friends. In the L2, experienced listeners
have been found to rely on topic knowledge applied in top-down fashion to
support their language processing (Tyler, 2001). In L2 pedagogy, Flowerdew and
Miller have noted that listening in a university class involves repeatedly reading
about, listening to, and discussing a set of ideas (2005). Extensive reading is
recommended for L2 readers (Aebersold& Field, 1997) Narrow listening to texts
with interrelated themes has been recommended for L2 listeners (Krashen, 1996;
Dupuy, 1999). Thematic listening uses these ideas and promotes student
autonomy, which is recommended (Berne, 2004). If learners are listening
thematically, listening from the middle of a broadcast or conversation becomes
much easier because the listener already has knowledge about what he or she is
likely to hear. Colleagues and I, like many ESL teachers, have used thematic
approaches to listening to help students develop their decoding skills and to
enhance their background knowledge Thematic listening can be implemented
through classroom work and through student assignments.

Thematic Listening in the Classroom

Choose thematically related listening texts for use in class. Seek out materials
that use listening selections that are related thematically (see Kozyrev & Stein,
2001, for one example). Supplement class texts by bringing in thematically
related listening selections. I supplemented my then current text (Kozyrev &
Stein, 2001) with a listening on a related topic drawn from a text my school was
not using at the time. The Internet provides additional possibilities for thematic
listening. For example, I supplemented a listening text on the environment from
Kozyrev & Stein (2001) with material from the U.S.-based National Public Radio.
Thematically-related podcasts, or audio or video content from major broadcasters
such as the British Broadcasting Corporation (2007) are possibilities. Obviously,
choose material that meets student needs. For a thematic approach to an entire
course, see Wachs (1996).

Student Projects and Assignments

Students can keep logs of their listening outside of class or be given extensive
listening projects (Rost 2002). White (1998) also offers suggestions for listening
projects. If your students like YouTube (2007) videos, they could find, follow, and
report on English-language content of interest to them. I have assigned students
to lead class discussions on listening selections of their choice drawn from
National Public Radio. Colleagues and I have asked students to follow favorite
shows. I have assigned students to follow an issue in the news by listening, and
then report on their listening by making audio journals (brief, recorded oral
reports) (Madden, 2002a). In these instances, students have opportunities to
repeatedly listen to and discuss thematically related material. I have also directed
students to National Public Radios Middle East coverage page because it offers
listening files and transcripts that are all related thematically (National Public
Radio, 2007).

Conclusion
Listening has implications far beyond the L2 classroom. Students may have to
listen from the middle of a broadcast, or from the middle of a conversation
conducted face-to-face or via the Internet. Students might listen thematically
when they follow the news or watch a favorite show on-line, or when they take a
class, whether in person or through distance education. Preparing students to
listen outside the classroom can help them meet the challenge of listening in the
middle of a context, and take advantage of the opportunity to explore their own
interests and use English for their own purposes.

References
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The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. XIV, No. 1, January 2008

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Madden, J. P. (2008) Helping ESL Students Adapt to Authentic Listening Situations. The Internet TESL
Journal, Vol. 14, No. 1. Retrieved July. 26, 2012, from http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Madden-
AuthenticListening.html